All Party Parliamentary Group On Sudan -Africa Minister Addresses Meeting at Westminster – New Chair Elected.
I was asked today to preside at the inaugural meeting of the re-established all Party Parliamentary Group on Sudan and South Sudan held at Westminster. Rachel Maskell MP was elected as chair with fellow officers Lord Curry of Kirkharle, Baroness Anelay of St.Johns and Stephen Gethins MP.
I paid tribute to the outgoing chair Vicky Ford, to the Earl of Sandwich, who has retired from Parliament, to the Secretariat (Glen Promnitz) and the NGOs who support the Group’s work.
We heard harrowing contributions from Geraldine O’Callaghan of World Food Programme, Sibongani Kayola of Mercy Corps, Will Carter of the Norwegian Refugee Council and the Sudanese Women Shuttle Diplomacy Initiative. Among other interventions we heard from Dame Rosalind Marsden.
Along with the mass displacement of 11 million internally displaced people, we learned that “famine is no longer a threat. It is a reality.”
We heard that people are dying of hunger; that 95%of hospitals and clinics are closed, that disease, including cholera, is raging; that skeletal children are some of the 9 out of 10 who are suffering from some form of malnutrition; that 16 humanitarian aid workers have died in Sudan this year – and that ever present danger has compromised the delivery of aid to starving people.
It was more than a mere formality to welcome Lord Collins of Highbury to his key role as Africa Minister and to speak to the meeting.
His longstanding interest in Africa and its people means that he comes to his post well informed and with genuine commitment. In giving the House of Lords the chance on Friday next to debate the catastrophic war in Sudan he has also used his political prowess to give Parliament time to debate a conflict that is too often out of sight and out of mind.
I joined the APPG over twenty years ago after travelling to Sudan during the Second Sudanese Civil War which raged from 1983 to 2005 and in which two million died of violence, famine or disease – and 4 million people were displaced.
After 22 years of conflict -one of the longest civil wars on record – it led, six years after its end, to the independence of South Sudan.
With my friend Rebecca Tinsley, who subsequently founded Waging Peace, in October 2004 she and I travelled to Darfur.
The Independent newspaper carried details of what I recorded under the headline “If this Isn’t Genocide, What on Earth Is?”
Maybe as many as 2-300,000 perished, between 2 and 3 million were displaced. We took witness statements describing atrocity crimes, systematic rape of women, the burning and looting of villages – 90% of which were razed to the ground – and driven by an ideological hatred of difference, a campaign of terror waged by the Government backed Janjaweed.
The scandalous absence of the international community in forestalling these atrocities and the ultimate failure to follow through the indictments of the International Criminal Court and to bring Omar Al Bashir and other perpetrators to justice – has simply emboldened those responsible and led to the same cycle of killing repeatedly happening all over again.
In a debate I initiated in Parliament in 2007 (at col, 204) I said that “among the many casualties of this conflict has been the credibility of international institutions.” True then, true now.
One of those in the gallery for that debate was Hamish Falconer – now an MP and a Minister in the FCDO. He was overall Director of the Sudan Divestment Campaign – which sought to stop the funding of genocide by multinational corporations and to wake up the world to the horrors in Darfur.
I hope that today’s new Government -in 2024 – will impose stronger sanctions on individuals and entities documented as responsible for death and destruction in Sudan – including Jihadists living here or in other western democracies.
Sudan’s war lords must be targeted for impeding free and unfettered access of international humanitarian aid to civilians. Until they do, we must make our pressure personal, including seizing and freezing assets.
In different times, Dag Hammarskjöld, arguably the greatest of UN General Secretaries, warned against such international inertia. He said” It is when we all play safe that we create a world of utmost insecurity.”
As we have seen in Tigray, and again in Sudan, increasingly discredited institutions missing in action, have left abandoned people to die in indescribable suffering.
And we cannot say we did not see this coming.
In early 2023, as we were approaching the 20th anniversary of the Darfur genocide – a genocide that the UK Government recognised as such until the designation was quietly removed from the FCDO website – I increasingly received disturbing messages from Darfurians about the targeting of their community.
The APPG asked me to chair a new Inquiry.
During evidence sessions we heard shocking accounts and when we published our report in April 2023 we warned specifically of the risk of a new genocide in Darfur. I was especially grateful to Dame Rosalind Marsden, Gill Lusk and Dr.Ewelina Ochab for their contributions.
The report, entitled “Genocide: All Over Again in Darfur?” found, among other things, evidence of killings, the use of rape and sexual violence, torture, inhuman and degrading treatment, the use of child soldiers, and attacks on internally displaced person camps.
We said, “These crimes have all the hallmarks of atrocity crimes and embody early warning signs of potential further atrocities.”
We made a series of recommendations and stated “The current situation in Sudan is born out of the failed responses to the atrocities in Darfur over the last 20 years. It is extremely important. This is something we should remember every time we dare to think that we can neglect the issue of justice. When you neglect places affected by endemic violence you fail to see the harbingers, such as the half a million additional people displaced in the first six months of last year alone by the continuing conflict in Darfur – and some of whom end up as refugees in small boats. Conflict carries huge consequences”
The Report was published just as Sudan began to implode into today’s continuing war.
In the foreword I said “For a tantalising moment, there was a glimpse of hope in Sudan that warlords would retreat to the barracks and allow young technocrats, doctors, engineers, and others to help democracy flourish in the country”
But the fierce fighting which ensued between the Sudanese Armed Forces, led by General Abdel Fatah Al Burhan, and General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (known as Hemedti) quickly extinguished that glimmer of hope.
Recall that the two generals that are key in this violence in Sudan played a role in the Darfur genocide.
The lack of justice in Darfur, and in the country more widely is one of the most prominent early warning signs and risk factors of further atrocities.
Impunity always begets further crimes. Darfur and Sudan more broadly are not an exception. The lack of justice in Darfur, and in the country more widely is one of the most prominent early warnings.
We took evidence from Luis Ocampo, the International Criminal Court prosecutor, who indicted Bashir 14 years ago for genocide.
The Prosecutor was adamant that “the international community must never give up on taking this man to court.’
We concluded that whatever happens when the violence in Sudan ends, there will be no lasting and credible peace without a precisely articulated and funded justice mechanism whereby past impunity is seen by all Sudanese, including those in the marginalised periphery, to be ended.
On July 19th, 2023, I had a Private Notice Question to ask the Government, following the discovery of mass graves and an increase in crimes targeting non-Arab ethnic groups in Darfur, what assessment they have made of the risk of genocide in that region.
I quoted the current prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan KC, who told the United Nations Security Council the previous week that we are
“in peril of allowing history to repeat itself”?
He said that Darfur is “not on the precipice of a human catastrophe but in the very midst of one. It is occurring.”
At the time, Lord Collins asked the Government “what we are doing to put pressure on Sudan so that people cannot act with impunity in the future?”
I took the opportunity today to ask Lord Collins the same question.
He assured me that we are collecting evidence on atrocity crimes and we need to know what more we can we do to protect those at risk.
I hope he will convene a round table to examine ways to predict, prevent, protect, and prosecute – as we are required to do by the 1948 Genocide Convention.
During the meeting he referred to the Fact-Finding Mission for Sudan’s September 2024 report to the 57th session of the UN Human Rights Council, which has found appalling evidence of rape and sexual violence with rape of girls as young as eight and women as old as seventy-five. Repeat: Eight years of age.
The Fact-Finding Mission attributed these crimes to men wearing RSF uniforms and, in the context of Darfur, armed men allied to RSF, who victims referred to as Janjaweed, wearing traditional attire and a shawl around their head, masking most of their facial features.
The Fact-Finding Mission found that international crimes have been committed by SAF and RSF including “murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture; and committing outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment”; that the RSF and its allies committing “ war crimes of violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture; committing outrages upon personal dignity; rape, sexual slavery and any form of indecent assault; pillage; conscripting or enlisting children under the age of 15 or using them to participate actively in hostilities; intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population; intentionally directing attacks against persons and objects involved in humanitarian assistance and other specially protected objects; and ordering the displacement of the civilian population for reasons related to the conflict”; that “There are reasonable grounds to believe that RSF has committed the crimes against humanity of murder; torture; enslavement; rape, sexual slavery, and acts of a sexual nature of comparable gravity; persecution on the basis of intersecting ethnic and gender grounds in connection with the foregoing acts; and forcible displacement of population.”
Karim Khan KC, has confirmed that the current situation in Sudan is within the purview of the Court’s mandate and the Office has been collecting and analysing the evidence.
The UK needs to support this work, including by sharing any evidence that it may come into possession of. Furthermore, is the war crime unit, here in the UK, collecting evidence of the atrocities from the Darfurian diaspora in the UK, if and where they have such evidence, including in relation to the family members and/or from Darfurians who seek asylum in the UK.
Nor should we foolishly imagine that what happens in a faraway place stays there – with no implications for the rest of the world.
Our report pointed to the links between Putin and Sudan’s warring factions and how Sudan has become a home to displaced people from countries such as Eritrea, during its war, but has also been a leading source of refugees into Chad, Libya, and beyond that into the wider Mediterranean and Europe, and the English Channel. A recent report in the Economist – referred to by Lord Oates at today’s meeting – 60% of the refugees in Calais are from Sudan.
In the foreword to our Report I said, “More refugees will be coming our way if we do not act now and address the situation.” This is now the world’s biggest displacement crisis with over ten million people displaced, according to the UN.
Immediate priorities must be food, medical help, shelter, and protection from belligerents for civilians.
There must be a cessation of hostilities and a sustained and new attempt to build peace and democracy – the transition to which was well underway in 2019-21 following the 2018-19 Revolution which revealed a strong and undeniable public desire to build “peace, justice, and freedom” and to oppose the brutality of the sectarian regime which had terrorised the country for thirty years.
The enlightened Transitional Government of Premier Abdullah Hamdock was supported by the troika of the UK, Norway and US but not enough was done to help entrench it – although many regional players have a hatred of democracy.
Many anti-Islamist Sudanese Muslims and others crave a functioning State, national institutions, civil society, and stability. One reminded me that since independence in 1989 the SAF has been an army only ever deployed against its own people – including in South Sudan, Darfur, and the Nuba Mountains.
The RSF, meanwhile has emerged from the Janjaweed, described to me by African Muslims in Darfur as “Devils on horseback” – Arab militias formed to kill African settled farmers in the South and Nuba.
Wars end when one side clearly wins; when one side surrenders, when one side becomes exhausted. None of which seems at present. They both believe they can win. They both have weapons, money, and sometimes opaque external support. There have been reports of access to gold mines and foreign financial networks which share the same ideology.
And there has been dangerous Western indifference and neglect – and a refusal to see the ideology at work. When our APG report was launched the then Minister, Andrew Mitchell MP, said this is not an ideological war but a power struggle between two generals.
When he said this, he did not appear to notice the gaps of incredulity from many Sudanese in the audience. But he was only echoing what other outsiders have said and want to naively believe. This is about wiping the slate clean of the non-compliant, the ungodly or the unruly.
We need to know what is the Government’s strategy for curbing the spread of violent jihadist ideology across Africa – from Sudan to Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mozambique, and Boko Haram and ISIS West Africa in Nigeria – all of which countries contribute significantly to the outward flow of migrants from Africa.
The APPG recommended the restoration of the post of Special Envoy for Sudan. It has been anomalous to have one in South Sudan but not, as the US does, in the Republic of Sudan. So it was wonderful to hear the new Minister tell today’s meeting that richard Crowder has been appointed to fill this gap.
Hopefully he will be vocal in giving more public political support to the civilian movement for peace and democracy
The immediate priority must be to get humanitarian aid to the brave neighbourhood groups giving humanitarian support to civilians. The situation is too urgent to wait for permission from the men with guns to enter Sudan. In the Security Council the UK should call for an international intervention force under UN or African Union auspices – and initiate a Chapter VII mandate to do this .
Since 2001 – along with colleagues – I have asked literally hundreds questions and made too many interventions in Parliament about Sudan and Darfur.
It is depressing to be asking many of the same questions – and the recommendations in my reports of 2005 and 2023 yet again.
I fear that there is no greater indication of the failure of international justice and accountability than Sudan. And this catastrophic war has been ignored among the other competing demands for political attention – in Ukraine and the Middle East. But lives in Sudan matter as much as lives anywhere else and we need greater political resolve in demonstrating that we believe that. The UK Statement at the UN Human Rights Council this week began with the words “The situation in Sudan is devastating”. Our deeds must now match the words.
I hope and pray that the new Minister of Africa will at last turn the tide for the benighted people of this wonderful part of Africa.
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Statement to the Human Rights Council September 10th 2024.
